


Let All Of Our Pain Be The Champagne

by cafephan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2010!phan, 2017!Phan, Dan's Birthday 2017, Fluff, a whooole lot of kissing, and the all important first 'i love you', honestly it's just a huge fluff-fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11170950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafephan/pseuds/cafephan
Summary: An insight into Dan’s birthdays from both 2010 and 2017, and how everything connects.





	Let All Of Our Pain Be The Champagne

**Author's Note:**

> FOR CONTEXT: Dan is in university, long before he dropped out, and though they visit each other a lot in Manchester, Dan still lives in his dorm and Phil lives in the flat on his own. Basically the events we all know just with the dates changed to fit the storyline and times/dates in the fic better. Also, just like the actual Dan and Phil at the time, they’re swooning for each other haaaaaaaaard (all the flirting online happened as it did irl) but have yet to say I love you. 
> 
> also the title of this fic is from MGK's rap on Little Mix's 'No More Sad Songs' and i've wanted to use it as a title since I first heard it and though it doesn't fit the fic literally at all let's say the 'pain' is the pain Dan feels that he's not with Phil all the time and the 'champagne' is the luxe life they're living right now okay cool
> 
> oh and happy birthday to the lad himself i guess

**_June 10 th, 2010_ **

_AmazingPhil: TOMORROW!!!_

_danisnotonfire: must you really remind me i’m getting old x_x_

_AmazingPhil: if you’re old then what does that make me????_

_danisnotonfire: a walking talking corpse_

_danisnotonfire: admittedly a pretty damn hot corpse but_

_danisnotonfire: still_

_danisnotonfire: you get me ^_^_

_[AmazingPhil is typing…]_

_[AmazingPhil is deleting…]_

_AmazingPhil: … would that mean necrophilia on your part ;)))_

_[danisnotonfire is typing…]_

_[danisnotonfire is deleting…]_

_danisnotonfire: goodnight phil_

_AmazingPhil: sleep tight, dan x_

_[danisnotonfire is typing…]_

_[danisnotonfire is deleting…]_

_[danisnotonfire is typing…]_

_[danisnotonfire is deleting…]_

_danisnotonfire: <3_

****

**_June 11 th, 2010_ **

“What are these?” Dan asks as he drops the various wrapped presents onto his bed, making sure his laptop’s crappy webcam showcases each one as it falls.

“You got them!” Phil grins, and Dan sucks in a breath. Phil’s smile has always been a weakness for him. His _real_ smile, not the one overexaggerated for videos and such.

“May have had to fight one away from my dickhead of a flatmate but thank you for writing my name on all of them, it helped a lot.”

Phil laughs, and Dan feels a pang in his chest.

“You’re welcome. Only the most personalised of things for your special day!” Phil’s hands are cradling a steaming mug of coffee, and his glasses are close to steaming up.

“I wish you were here to open them with me” Dan frowns, and Phil matches it.

“I do too,” Phil sighs, “But the universe decided to rain on my cousin’s wedding last week so they had to reschedule the reception to today. It’s not like I’d rather be at an outdoor tea party affair rather than in your cramped university dorm, it has a certain charm to it.”

Dan scoffs. “Once you get past the smell of the dustbins that reside directly below my window, maybe.”

Phil shrugs, and laughs. “I love it because you’re there.”

They haven’t said ‘I love you’ yet, though they’ve both implied it many a time. Dan wants to, more than anything, but there is still a part of him that is terrified of rejection. Even after all the kisses and shared nights under the duvet.

“You’re such a nerd” Dan knows he’s blushing terribly.

Phil holds up a hand, the other still wrapped around his mug. “Guilty.”

Dan suddenly notices Phil’s surroundings, and tilts his head to the side.

“Speaking of, where are all your posters? Where are you?”

“I told you, I’m at my cousin’s wedding. Well technically I’m in the hotel my family booked out for it. It’s nothing special but it does the job.”

“The wifi is good for a hotel…”

“I paid extra for it. Only the best for you and your day!”

“Stop saying that” Dan mumbles, though he knows Phil won’t. When Phil finds a way to make Dan blush, he’ll keep at it.

“No. Open your presents! I’m ready and waiting to see your reaction!” Phil prompts eagerly, and Dan glances down at the pile of presents in his lap.

“Is there any particular order?”

Phil shakes his head. “Not really. They all follow a theme so it’s not like there’s a hierarchy.”

Dan nods in understanding and picks up the first present, a rectangular shape wrapped in matte black paper.

Suddenly, Phil sputters. “Wait! Open that one last, okay?”

His outburst startles Dan slightly, and the present tumbles out of his hands.

“Didn’t you just say there was no order?” he questions.

“I changed my mind” Phil replies. “There’s no order for the others, promise.” He nods, encouraging Dan to continue.

He picks up a small squishy present, wrapped messily in the same black paper.

“I seriously need to give you a masterclass in wrapping presents” Dan jokes, and Phil rolls his eyes playfully.

“Oh yeah? You want to do that instead?” Phil asks, and Dan presses his lips together.

“I mean, it’s more of a thing to do in person…”

“Hm, funny how that works out” Phil smiles sadly, and Dan slips his finger under the paper and begins carefully unwrapping.

He places the object on his palm and holds it up to the camera, and Phil’s smile escalates into a grin.

“Because you’re always losing your keys!” he explains, and Dan raises an eyebrow.

“It’s an obnoxiously bright pink coin purse…”

Phil nods enthusiastically. “It’ll stand out so you’ll always find it!”

Dan doesn’t know how to react, he opens his mouth to begin hedging around his real reaction (he’s always been blessed with the ‘gift of the gab’ as Phil’s extremely northern grandad had told him on the only occasion he’d met the man), Phil bursts into laughter.

“Your face! You thought I was serious!” He exclaims, and places his mug down to move in closer to the camera. “I got you _good_.”

Dan too leans in close to the camera, then slowly raises his hand and flips him off, which only causes Phil to laugh more.

“Is this because I got you those extra small condoms for your birthday as a joke?” Dan asks, and Phil blushes slightly.

“ _No,_ but now you’ve reminded me of that I definitely have some interesting ideas for your Christmas presents.”

“I wish I didn’t say anything, I regret it already” Dan mumbles, and Phil moves his hand across his lips in a lock-and-key motion.

Dan smiles and rolls his eyes as he unzips the coin purse, and gasps slightly as he retrieves the keyring hidden inside it.

“I kind of had to” Phil says, smiling as Dan admires it. “Do you like it?”

“Did you seriously go to the trouble of personalising a llama keyring to have a fringe and… is it on a platform surrounded by fire?” he laughs, and Phil nods.

“It’s ironic. Get it? Because-“

“I made this username when I was thirteen! Let me live!”

Phil shakes his head. “Never. Even if one day you decide to embrace _Daniel_ and leave llamas behind this will always be a reminder of the early days we met!”

“I won’t! Only my family call me Daniel!”

Phil tilts his head to the side and smirks. “I’ve called you Daniel before.”

Dan again feels his cheeks heat up. “In a _very_ different context! Shut up! Also I have plenty of reminders of the early days we met. By the way I’m definitely keeping the jumper you left here. It’s cosy and… mine.” He decided against saying ‘it smells like you’ even though the jumper most certainly does. But he doesn’t want to risk coming across as creepy. Even to Phil, who knows him better than he knows himself. Probably.

Phil shrugs. “It looks cuter on you anyway.”

Dan mumbles a thank you as he fights his furious blush, and picks up the second present to distract himself and give his face time to calm down.

“Which one are we on now?” Phil asks, and Dan holds up the box-shaped present. Phil nods, and Dan begins to unwrap it.

“You know I love my candles” he places a hand on his chest, and Phil smiles.

“Look at the scent!”

“The scent of happiness” Dan reads out, and looks to Phil quizzically. “Did you turn a drop of your blood into a candle?”

Phil screws his face up in disgust, and Dan knows he’s fawning again.

“Ew, no. But apparently it’s supposed to smell like a million things that are happy. I thought it might help when it comes to exams and stuff, I don’t know. I just thought you might like it.”

Dan swallows back the urge to scream ‘you are my happiness’ as it’s entirely cliché and probably entirely too soon. He hoped his previous remark implied it, but Phil didn’t appear to understand.

“It was one of those things I saw in the shop and it just had your name all over it!” Phil adds gleefully. His face falls for a second, however. “I know sometimes you struggle.”

“It’s just hard on days like these when it’s not possible to see you but I, like, really want to” Dan scratches the back of his neck nervously, he wonders if he’ll ever not be nervous saying such things.

“Me too” Phil says, and Dan isn’t sure whether it’s his crappy webcam’s quality or if Phil’s eyes are genuinely glassy. He doesn’t comment on it, just in case. “One day, though. Yeah?”

It’s an unspoken plan they’ve had for the longest time now. They’ve had too many emotional departures from one another to know that they never want to suffer it again. Even though Dan sometimes practically lives at Phil’s flat on days with fewer lectures, it isn’t the same.

Dan nods, and feels tears well up in his eyes. “One day” he repeats, and Phil takes a sip of his drink, Dan assumes to distract himself from crying (presuming he was close, as he suspects).

“Thank you for the candle” he wiggles the object and forces a smile, though a bigger part of him wants to cry a little.

“That’s okay” Phil assures him, and takes a breath. “Open the next one!”

Forced enthusiasm or not, Dan nods and begins unwrapping the second-to-last present.

“My favourite poets!” Dan grins as he looks through the books that lay upon the now unwrapped paper, and Phil smiles. Dan’s eyes have lit up.

Phil knows Dan has had to hide his love for literature for a large part of his life, out of fear of being bullied because of it. It’s always broken Phil’s heart, but it always causes a warm feeling in his chest when Dan talks so passionately about literature amongst countless other topics that wouldn’t leave his lips in conversation with anyone else.

“Is this the one I was telling you about last week?” Dan holds up one book in particular, and Phil nods.

“Surprise!”

Dan leans in close to the camera. “I was going to get this myself, you dork. You shouldn’t have gone through so much trouble.”

Phil leans in close to the camera too. “Well now you don’t have to. Save those sweet student pennies.”

“I’m going to forget you actually just used the phrase ‘sweet student pennies’” Dan laughs, and Phil shakes his head and laughs too.

“Yeah I appreciate that, it wasn’t my finest hour of vocabulary.”

“Seriously though, thank you so fucking much.” Dan doesn’t quite know how to articulate his reaction to any of the things Phil has bought him, so much thought has clearly gone into each and every one, and he never thought anyone would really care about him enough to do so.

“It’s fine, honestly. Getting some of them posted was a bit of a nightmare but it’s all worth it to see your real smile” Phil raises his mug in front of his lips.

Naturally, Dan begins to blush furiously once again.

“I don’t have a ‘real smile’, you weirdo!”

Phil laughs and places his mug down. “Yes you do, your dimple really pops and your cheeks kind of like cave in a little and your eyes, like, sparkle. It’s beautiful. But then again I don’t know if anyone else would notice as much as I do because I doubt anyone could spend any more time studying you than I do” he shrugs, as if the words he has just said are the most casual, everyday phrases.

Dan feels himself closer than ever to tears, and he darts his gaze around his tiny dorm room as he attempts to compose himself. All he wants is to be with Phil, and tell him all the things he absolutely _adores_ about him. And maybe kiss him. A lot.

“You’re so soppy” he says as a tear slips down his cheek, though he hastily wipes it away.

“It’s your birthday, I’m allowed to be extra soppy. This is your day, I want to make it special.”

Dan bites back a million and one clichés.

“Final present?” he asks, and Phil nods, though he’s biting his lip.

Dan hears voices off-camera from Phil’s end of the call, and Phil turns to face them, and nods in understanding to something that’s said which Dan can’t hear.

The look on his face when he turns back to Dan speaks a million words. Undeniably, Dan feels his stomach drop.

“Family wedding stuff?” Dan asks, and Phil nods slowly.

“I’m sorry.”

Dan forces a smile. “It’s not as if you can help it. Go and have fun, we’ll speak soon.”

“Try and have a good rest of your day, okay?”

Dan takes another look around his tiny dorm and keeps the forced smile. “I’ll try my hardest.”

Phil is biting his lip again. “I-“ he pauses and swallows, “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“Of course.”

And then the call ends. Dan shuts his laptop, causing the room to plunge into darkness.

His parents and grandparents had called earlier in the day and his brother had Skyped him that afternoon, and his flatmates couldn’t give less of a shit about him if they tried (it was more than mutual), so Dan was going to ride out the rest of his birthday alone. Which he wouldn’t have minded, say, two years ago, but right now, there is only one person he wanted beside him.

But he pushes the selfish thoughts aside and gets under his covers and switches on the bedside lamp. He reaches for the final present which Phil insisted was to be opened last, and places it on his lap. He absentmindedly begins tapping his fingers against it, almost as if he’s nervous about the inanimate object that is waiting for him.

He turns on some music just for background noise (a new CD bought for him by his brother who shares his music taste for the most part) and carefully unwraps the present, uncovering a black leather-bound notebook, complete with his initials engraved in the bottom corner.

He gasps slightly when he opens it up and sees a page of Phil’s handwriting gracing the front page.

 

_Dan(iel/ny);_

_HAPPY BIRTHDAY! *confetti cannon and showers of cake*_

_When I saw this book I just had to get it for you! I got it personalised with your initials because I just thought it added that much more and made it look more professional and just overall more ‘Dan’. Even though that’s pretty hard to define, you just deserve the best and that’s what I tried to give you. Now I’m rambling and I’m writing this so it’s not as if I can delete it. Oops._

_But anyway, this book is for whatever comes out of that beautiful mind of yours. Whether it be uni notes you need for revision, shopping lists, random doodles, thoughts, dreams, future plans or whatever else you create that I can’t fathom, here’s a place for you to do that. You fascinate me on a daily basis, in more ways than you will ever be able to comprehend, I know sometimes you don’t believe the things I tell you but please, know that I mean what I’m saying._

_I love you._

_I’m in love with you, and have been for a damn long while now. I’ve been scared to say it in person so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity, now I know you’ll have read this once I’ve sent it to you, I’ll just be sat waiting for your reaction, good luck to future Phil dealing with that. But to future Dan, know that he feels the same as I do! Have I just created a paradox? A really confusing paradox? Okay swiftly moving on._

_I feel like on some level you’ve always known, I’ve never been all that good at hiding it, I’ve just never been able to get enough of you, and I never want to. Every cliché (well, all the positive lovey-dovey ones) just apply to us, and I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve here – in writing form – but holy crap Dan, I’m so head over heels. And as scary as it might be to say, I never want to stop. I never want the feeling of whenever I see your face to fade, I never want my heart to stop racing whenever you kiss me and whenever you’re near me, it’s something I’ve never felt before and it’s so brand new and it happened so unexpectedly in the beginning but I just want to experience it all with you and all the new things that would come with it, I just want to be yours if you’ll even have me._

_I just realised there’s an incredibly strong possibility you don’t even feel the same and I’ve just ruined this entire notebook for you. Sorry about that?_

_But still, even if you don’t, this can be a nice memento of that time AmazingPhil told you he was in love with you?? I’m sure younger Dan would appreciate it ;))))_

_You can always laugh about it in the future if nothing else!_

_Happy birthday, Dan. I love you._

_\- Phil xx_

Dan rereads it over and over again until his tears begin to dot the page, and he immediately swears loudly and begins waving the book around to dry it, as he wipes his eyes with his other hand.

Phil loves him. He’s said it, there’s literal evidence.

Dan would be lying if he said he’d never dreamt about it.

He scrambles for his phone and presses Phil’s number from speed dial and he hears his breathing is erratic as he awaits the dial tone. The dial tone keeps him company for a fair while before the generic voicemail message informs him Phil is currently unavailable, and he is to leave a message after the beep.

When the beep sounds (and almost deafens him), he takes a deep breath.

“Phil, it’s me. I mean, of course it’s me. It’s my number. Anyway, I just read what you wrote and… I can’t stop crying, fuck I’m an absolute wreck but,” he runs a hand through his hair and takes another deep breath, “Phil Lester I’m so in love with you. It’s so good to finally say that,” he laughs, though his voice is still majorly choked with emotion, “But holy fuck I’m so in love with you. I love you… It’s nearly ten thirty on my birthday and I’m sat in my tiny ass dorm room, crying, telling you that I love you through your voicemail…. This is such a Dan thing to do, you really couldn’t write this, could you?”

He realises he’s gone off on a huge tangent and shakes his head to regain focus.

“But yeah, just… call me when you get this, yeah? I think we need to have a nice long chat. I-“ a huge grin takes over his face. “I love you. Bye.”

He places his phone on the bedside table and flops against his pillow, clutching the notebook to his chest, the most genuine of smiles gracing him. He wonders if he’s smiling his ‘real smile’ as Phil worded it. But his mind quickly drifts back to what has just happened and he hugs the notebook tightly as he beams up at the ceiling, his mind flooding with a million and one possibilities for the future. His future has never looked so vibrant.

 

 

 

**_June 11 th, 2017_ **

“Happy birthday again!” Louise wraps her arms around Dan sloppily and her words are slurred in places.

It has been a night full of fun, drinking, board games, movies, drinking, celebrating and drinking some more. Dan wouldn’t want to spend it any other way (despite what he tweeted earlier in the month just to keep up with his self-deprecating humour), surrounded by the majority of his closest friends. And Phil, of course.

The door is open and most guests have already left, Louise just has one final over-emotional goodbye to give.

“Okay okay, time for late night kebabs and crying in the chip shop” a slightly-less-drunk Bryony jokes as she pulls Louise away and leads her out of the flat, before turning around and running back to give Dan one last hug herself.

“You two don’t have too much fun, okay?” she points her finger between the two men and wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, and Dan laughs and shoves her playfully.

Once everyone has left, they both collapse onto the sofa.

“Being a host is always so much work” Dan says as he lifts his legs up and drapes them over Phil’s lap.

“You’re telling me,” Phil laughs, “Imagine if I’d have gone through with the idea of throwing you a surprise party like I was going to. I’d have had to do and prepare everything on my own.”

“Why didn’t you, again?” Dan pokes Phil in the chest and Phil gently grasps the finger Dan was prodding him with.

“Twenty-six isn’t that much of a milestone” he shrugs, a cheeky grin on his lips.

Dan breaks free of Phil’s grip and begins poking him again.

“What do you mean not much of a milestone? Is the yearly marking of my birth not enough to celebrate?”

Phil laughs, perhaps a little too loudly considering they’ve both consumed a fair amount of alcohol (though they still are nowhere near drunk, they’ve learnt to pace themselves over the years).

“Hey, I always go all out for you!”

Dan ruffles Phil’s hair. “Indeed you do, love. Indeed you do.”

“How dare you try to make me feel bad!” Phil launches forward and begins tickling Dan (a classic sign they’re not exactly stone cold sober) and Dan immediately loses control of the majority of his limbs as he flails around helplessly.

The tickling goes on for long enough that Dan accidentally kicks the tray off of the coffee table and sends it clattering to the ground, causing their keys to spill over the floor.

“Look what you did!” Phil gasps and places a hand to his chest, and Dan rolls his eyes as he recovers breath (from the _very_ intense laughing during the tickling debacle) and heads over to pick everything back up.

His various keyrings smack gently against each other as he picks them up, though one in particular catches his attention.

Wordlessly, he holds it for Phil to see.

“Honestly I’m shocked you kept it this long,” Phil says, “It’s practically fallen apart and the quality is so crappy.”

Dan sits back down and sits the keyring up on his palm. The llama’s platform of fire had fallen off years ago and its fringe was hanging on by an invisible thread.

“I’m keeping it as long as I can” Dan replies quickly. “It reminds me of you and therefore it’s staying.”

“We live together and spend every waking moment together, you can’t help but be reminded of me…”

“It reminds me of times when I _had_ to be reminded of you, when we _weren’t_ together all the time, sharpshit” Dan clarifies and Phil laughs. “It’s still kind of cute. In a ‘oh my god I regret the past however many years of my online life’ kind of way.”

“Hey, I feel the same way about you” Phil jokes and Dan flips him off.

Dan finds himself glancing over to the bookcase at the opposite end of their (still overwhelmingly huge compared to what they were used to) new living room, and the faded label of the happiness scented candle sitting untidily amongst the other clutter they store on there.

“I’ve kept everything from that year” he states, and Phil pulls him into his arms and begins lazily threading his fingers through Dan’s hair.

“Everything?”

Dan nods.

“You know I have. The books are on the Dan shelf in the office… room… thing-“

“Office room thing,” Phil chuckles, “We really should settle on a name for it one of these days.”

“Stop changing the subject when I’m reminding you how sentimental and not horrible I am” Dan sticks out his bottom lip, and Phil kisses him softly in silent apology. “As I was saying before I was so _rudely_ interrupted…”

“I-“ Phil stops himself mid-sentence when Dan raises an eyebrow. Phil closes his mouth and nods.

“Anyway, the candle is still over there, the books are in the office room thing, the keyring is on my keys and, well, you know about the notebook” Dan reaches underneath the coffee table and retrieves the now extremely tattered and faded leather-bound notebook from the shelf.

Dan shifts so he’s leaning against Phil’s chest rather than laying down with just his head resting there, and Phil moves his arms so he’s again holding Dan. As Dan opens the book, Phil rests his hand atop Dan’s free one, and traces gentle patterns on the top of Dan’s hand with his thumb.

Dan is positive the warm smile he’s currently sporting and the warm feeling in his chest are never going to fade, and that is something he is more than blissfully content with.

As much as he loves his friends and family, and how honoured he feels every year that so many people want to celebrate his birthday with him, nothing will ever be able to beat the cosy nights with Phil. Not that they only happen on his birthday, they happen weekly or sometimes even daily, but there’s always just something special, despite how many times they happen. He’s never known how to explain it, but then again he’s never been able to explain anything he’s felt with Phil, not since day one. And that fact still makes him giddy.

The book contains all manner of important things. Not only vital things such as their insurance numbers, various reference numbers and such, but all the sentimental things too (it is Dan, after all. Though he quickly took to using the book as a joint holder for his and Phil’s affairs rather than just his own).

Addresses for the first, second and third flats prior to their initial showings (as well as the flats they didn’t pursue), their original tatinof ideas – which consisted of just _‘DAN AND PHIL TOUR?!??!!?’_ for the longest time. Up until their first proper meeting about the tour, they both went back to that very page to scribble down ideas such as ‘song???’, ‘internet irl???’. Looking back at it now, it’s more emotional than Dan would’ve expected it to be.

There are multiple pages of ‘I love you’s from long distance plane journeys when the notebook was spread between them which should’ve been used for video ideas or plans for future projects, but their sleep deprivation usually made them into complete saps, and they’d rather write the same three words over and over than sleep or do anything productive.

There’s even a page of potential dog names for the future, and on one bored afternoon Phil matched the names up to the breed he thought suited them best. Though he wouldn’t say, Dan is still fond of a golden Labrador named Biscuit and a Shibe named Crunchie (Phil was hungry on the day he thought of those names).

As well as countless other pages of stuff that has been important through the years, and Dan feels himself getting emotional all over again. Phil pulls him impossibly closer and presses a kiss to the top of his head once they reach the last page.

“We’ve been through a lot” he says softly, and Dan nods.

Dan leans up and kisses him deeply, and they both pull away with goofy smiles. It’s times like this that Dan is reassured that Phil wouldn’t rather be with anyone else either. Sometimes he’s still struck with the insecurity that he’s not good enough for Phil. But these days, those thoughts disappear pretty much as soon as they arrive.

“You never told me what the theme was for all of those presents, you know” Dan says wistfully, and Phil glances around the room, and his smile only grows.

“I was going to be really annoying just now and not tell you, but, honestly, I bought them all for you for when we share a house. Or flat. Or shed, if we’d have ended up there. Just a few things to make a house a home, you know?”

“You knew we’d be living together?”

Phil shrugs. “I thought it was pretty inevitable. Call it psychic intuition if you want.”

Dan doesn’t know how to articulate what he’s feeling, so hopes it comes through in the way he kisses Phil then. He rests his hand just under Phil’s chin so he can kiss him for longer, and if after nearly eight years the butterflies haven’t died down, he hopes they never do. He never wants to lose the intoxicated feeling he gets whenever Phil kisses him, it’s his own private addiction. Ever the cliché, but he couldn’t care less.

“Is a home really a home without a dog?” Dan finds himself asking, and Phil taps a finger to his chin.

“It’s not a Dan and Phil home without a dog” he answers, and Dan nods. It wouldn’t make much sense to anyone else, but the amount of late night conversations they’ve had about their future make his stomach flip with excitement.

“Forever home?” he asks (almost rhetorically) and Phil hugs him tightly.

“Forever home” he repeats, and they seal the promise with a kiss, as they’ve done countless times before.

Though somehow this one felt more special, Dan is now well on his way to his thirties whilst Phil waits for him there, and they’ve already told anyone who cares to listen that where they are right now isn’t permanent. They conveniently leave out that they’ve already started looking at houses on the outskirts despite only just finishing unpacking, but the world doesn’t need to know everything.

Hence why instead of giving the soppy content their fanbase crave, Phil simply tweeted a picture of Dan’s loss during their late afternoon Mario Kart game before their friends arrived to join them for a birthday dinner at a fancy restaurant, and why Dan stuck to his usual style of birthday tweeting.

“You’re twenty six now” Phil states the obvious, and Dan squirms.

“Must you really remind me I’m getting old?”

Phil smirks. “If you’re old then what does that make me?”

Dan then understands what they’re doing. That very chat is embedded into his memory probably forever. More for the fact he’d pepped himself up for saying ‘I love you’, but chickened out. And then obviously what happened the day after, with the notebook. It was something most people probably would’ve forgotten, but ever the sentimental person, Dan would never.

“A walking talking corpse.”

Phil waves his hand, waiting for the rest. Dan feels himself blush.

He sighs dramatically to attempt to disguise it. “Admittedly a pretty damn hot corpse but still, you get me” he mumbles, and Phil bites his lip to suppress laughter, and Dan is half torn between wanting to join him but also wanting the ground to swallow him whole.

Of course this is how they spend their night, reciting their old chat logs from memory alone. Not that he’d want to be spending it any other way, they had never been the ‘party hard til we die’ type.

“Would that mean necrophilia on your part?” Phil winks goofily, not seductively in any way, and it sends Dan into hysterics.

“I’m not saying goodnight to you, dork” he ends their recital between gasps of laughter, and Phil joins in laughing. “But all that time I spent typing was deleting was me trying to phrase basically what you said in the notebook. But you knew that, right?”

“Maybe on some level, but it’s always nice to be told in person.”

He winks in that same way, and Dan snorts.

“You’re seriously requesting me to say it right now? It’s my birthday, you should be saying it to me!” Dan points in the general direction of the mantelpiece where the majority of his birthday cards are displayed.

“ _Fine.”_ Phil huffs emphatically, his breath grazing the top of Dan’s curls. “I tolerate you on a daily basis.”

“And they say romance is dead” Dan rolls his eyes and Phil sticks out his tongue at him.

Phil reaches for the notebook, opens to the first page, and drops it onto Dan’s lap.

“Nothing’s changed from that. Just that I can say it openly and freely these days.”

Dan feels his heart do a flip, or some other cliché of the same calibre. “It’s always nice to be told in person” he mocks Phil from earlier. Phil takes him by surprise by tugging on his shirt and pulling him closer once more, and kissing him passionately.

Dan immediately reciprocates and soon enough Phil is backed up against the arm of the sofa and Dan’s hands are tangled in his hair as they kiss, none of them having any desire to stop any time soon.

Though of course air and the universe have to intervene and cause them to break apart for breath, temporarily.

“Happy birthday” Phil whispers, and Dan kisses him again.

“Thank you” he replies, before settling down into Phil’s arms, and rests his head against Phil’s chest.

Phil snuggles further into the sofa to get more comfortable too, and threads his fingers through Dan’s.

The floor lamp is casting an amber-ish glow across the room, the perfect ambience. Dan knows it’s a night they’ll be spending on the sofa, but they’d spent enough money on it that it was just as comfy as a bed, so he had no objections. Their old, uncomfortable sofa was tucked away in another room and was rarely used now, for good reason. But of course, Dan refused to part ways with it when they moved.

“I love you” Phil says into the otherwise silent room. His voice is heavier, Dan can tell he’s close to sleep.

He squeezes Phil’s hand lightly, and wraps his other arm around Phil’s torso.

“I love you more” he’s smiling as he says it, the words never lose their meaning even though he’s lost track of how many times he’s spoken them.

He feels Phil press another kiss to his hair, and then Phil’s asleep soon after.

Dan knows he isn’t far behind him. As his eyes flutter closed for the final time as a twenty-five year old (he was a very late arriving baby) he’s filled with nothing but excitement for whatever the future holds.

But he knows for sure that there’s no way he’d rather have brought in his twenty-sixth year of life, and nobody else he ever wants beside him.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Thank you so much for reading and please leave a kudos and comment letting me know what you thought :)
> 
> You can find me on twitter (@bloggerhowell) and tumblr (cafephan) if you so desire, you can see my daily meltdowns about how obsessed with each other they are
> 
> as i type this bryony just posted the pic on her insta story of dan and the sushi and i'm squealing okay bye


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